


Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

by supernaturalwhovian



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Babies, Blood, Death, Flashbacks, Gore, Hallucinations, Hell, Hunter - Freeform, Night Terrors, PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, SOLDIER - Freeform, Salt, Shape Shifters, Soulless Sam, Torture, Vampires, War, headcases, mothers, veteran
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-15 12:27:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2228988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supernaturalwhovian/pseuds/supernaturalwhovian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester is a soldier, whatever way you think of it--vessel of Heaven, hunter of supernatural beings. </p><p>And all soldiers have flashbacks and nightmares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Soldiers are always affected when they come off the battlefield. But it's always in different ways.

Dean Winchester. 

He did poorly. He pretended he was all right, when really nothing could ever be worse.

He saw a blonde, and he felt like his chest had been carved out with a hot iron poker—not that it hadn't been done before, which brought on fresh memories. It was like one thing just kept slamming into the next and breaking his heart all over again—first he thought of Jo, then the thought of the hot poker dragged him back to his days in Hell. He didn't know which memories were worse—when he was the one being tortured, or the one doing the torturing. When he was tortured, he was a victim, he was in pain and he was screaming out for help that he knew would never come. He could feel his body and his soul dissolving, and the first time he disappeared altogether, he let out a sigh of relief. It was done. There was no more. 

And then he re-formed, bow wrapped to receive plenty of torture and agony for Christmas.

On the other hand, being the torturer was worse. He didn't know how many souls he had made feel the exact way he had felt.

He didn't even know if heartbroken was the right word to use to describe the feeling. It was more like his heart had been hollowed out, scooped out with a spoon, like a chocolate Easter bunny. Someone, or something, had eaten him away from the inside out like acid, and he knew he would never rid himself of the ache and scar tissue that the acid left behind.

Sometimes he would go days without the hallucinations. Weeks, even. Months if he was lucky. But there were other days that they hit him wave by wave, slamming him under the current and keeping him in the impact zone. Then the strippers and the booze were all he could rely on, unhealthy distractions for an even unhealthier state of mind.

Seeing mothers made him think of Lisa, and of Ellen. Lisa, the innocent civilian—everything bad that happened to her was his fault. He had lost a piece of himself when Ellen and Jo died, but even without the Winchesters, they would have been involved through Jo's dad. Lisa, on the other hand... that was Dean's fault, and he knew it. He should have left Lisa and Ben after he saved them when Ben turned eight. He should have climbed back into his prized car and hit the highway and never came back, the way he normally did.

He couldn't eat pretzels. He tasted salt and felt like vomiting. Salted pretzels. Salted doors. Salted windows. Salted perimeter while Jo bled out on the floor from a gashed open abdomen. Pouring salt down Alistair's throat. Torture. Hell. He would be gasping like a fish out of water. Salted pretzels equaled Hell to him, the way frying seafood equaled war and death to a Vietnam veteran. 

Babies. Babies equaled shape shifters and the time that Samuel's men died trying to stop the alpha shape shifter. Dean didn't know whether he felt worse for the people he was forced to kill for being too far gone, or the babies and young children that he failed to save from a monstrous fate.

Twilight previews equaled vampires, equaled migraines and the scurrying of mice breaking his skull apart, equaled soulless Sam, equaled Hell.

People would tell him sometimes to go to sleep. “Go to sleep and it'll be easier,” they would say with a smile, but Dean avoided sleep. 

Sleep was when he saw Meg again, accusing him of enjoying killing the innocent girl behind her demon occupant. Sleep was when he saw every family that he had to apologize to: “I'm sorry, I couldn't save him.” “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have left her alone.” “I'm sorry... I didn't get there in time.” “I'm sorry. The person you knew has been gone for a long time.” Sleep was when he saw the times that he was forced to make hard decisions between one evil and an even worse evil. Sleep was when he was reminded of all of his failures. Despite all the reassurances otherwise, every soldier secretly thinks that every civilian and innocent death is their fault. Logic tells them they can't save everyone—their hearts demand otherwise.

There was no escape, not even in his dreams.

There was always a simple explanation to why every hunter the boys had ever met were head cases. They were just in denial about it.


End file.
